Using Free Image

There are many needs of digital images online. It is And there are billions of images out there you can just copy paste and use it to your blog. For bloggers it is very important to have a good image with each post and most of them Google search it and use it to their blog. It might be a great high quality image but most likely your now hosting a copyrighted material. If you want to hide from all the penalties you also Google search for free images which gives you few billion result of site that will provide you "free" images, which aren't actually as free as you think it is.

Google is the world

What Google search does is to view all the indexed images over internet and there are no way to know if it is actually copyrighted or not. If claim the copyright for a copyrighted image, either the copyrighter or your host can take down your site. If you think you are lucky, you will already be penalize on traffic by your search engine.

How about royalty free?

Royalty free is a system where there is a copyright holder and they allow you to use their images with out royalty fee. With of course limitation. It can mean you have to pay the creator one time fee, or creator will limit you to certain size, length and where and how you can use the image. So don't go crazy with royalty free stuff. There is a copyright holder who can take action against you for going over limitation.

The free photo sites then?

Definitely not. Every free image distribution sites has certain limit. Some makes you link to their site (takes your juice), some wants a limited time royalty. Some are just scam and list of images from Google. Some sites says their photos are public domain (see below for more info), while they get the images from user upload where anyone can upload a copyrighted photo isn't a good place to find your photo either. Of course there are actual free images that you can use for your site out there, but since most of them are not actually what you need don't take the chance.

Public Domain?

Yes you are allowed to use public domain image freely in your site or blog. Public domain images are images that doesn't have any copyright holders. It's in a position that it is unable to restore the copyright claim for the photo. Thus you can use the image for almost anything without royalties or permissions. But you can not claim copyright for the image. Unfortunately not every site that says to have public domain photos are public domain, so be careful using one. Public domain is the best choice if you are looking for free images.

So where can I find public domain images?

There are lots of public domain image search out there. Here you can find a Wikipedia's big list of sites for your need.